Blog Archives

Deer Cave, Malaysia, Borneo

4/18/2014

A while back it was brought to my attention that I have posted a lot of animals from Borneo, but not so many cave pics. I will try to add more cave pics into the mix, and here is a start.

Joyce Lundberg crossing the one deep spot while returning from the back of the cave.

Deer Cave (Gua Payau and Gua Rusa in the local languages) in the Gunung Mulu National Park, Sarawak, Borneo, Malaysia, has often been noted as the largest cave passage in the world. Recently a cave in Vietnam has challenged this assertion with massive passage size as well, but not the point of this post.

This photo was taken in 2008, and shows Joyce Lundberg entering a deep pool in the main Deer Cave stream. This was the only place in the cave where we really had to get wet much above the knees.

Of note, this photo was taken about 400 meters from the rear entrance to the cave as seen in the background (that's a quarter mile away!).

And, we were there, in this fantastic giant cave, to do some science. If you have an interest in stromatolites, then you should read about what we discovered and learned about such from the trip at:

http://scholarship.claremont.edu/wmkeckscience/69/

Sorry this is not the whole article, but the abstract does give a lot of details.

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Lake Frank, Maryland

4/17/2014

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Bernard Frank was a big time conservationist. Today I hit the lake and preserve named for him. Of note, I did not hit the raptor center or any of the bits associated with that, but just hiked around the lake.

A few pics, from Lake Frank in Maryland.

A white-tailed deer

Brown-headed cowbird couple.

The only reasonable way to cross the creek was via this log.

He free-climbed up this face and earned a victory shot.

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Yellow Butterfly

4/16/2014

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A butterfly at night,

I tried real hard to figure out where this photo is from, but failed. Will update with a location if I can figure it out.

And I haven't put up any crazy video links lately, so here is one:

http://www.wimp.com/downhillbiking/

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Spring peeper

4/15/2014

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A spring peeper, Hyla crusifix.

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Reston Zoo continued

4/14/2014

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Really no way to cover this well without writing about it, which I should do but don't have time to do (meaning covering the topic of zoo animals as conservation ideals vs not caging animals). The Zoo is well worth a visit, and here are more pics.

Zebra chewing the grass

I actually don't know what this deer is, but it was too cute not to post.

An eland in the grassland

An emu

An emu close up

A watusi. Massive horns.

Red-eared sliders basking

Red-eared slider

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A mystery, solved at the Reston Zoo

4/13/2014

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This is a pic I took recently, living and photographing in Northern Viriginia. A black-tailed prairie dog.

Prairie dog at the Reston Zoo

To be sure, this critter does not live near here. But at the Reston Zoo they are available to watch.

With the National Zoo not so far away, and free, it is not so likely that tourists will find and hit this zoo. But it is a zoo worth a visit, as many animals can be touched! This is amazing for kids, and creates a situation where kids can not just see animals, but touch them. Excellent stuff for conservation.

A scarlet macaw

Most of the touchable animals are the goats, sheep and similar domesticated things. Which is quite worthy.

Looking at each other

And likely I need to have a second day to post all the pics from the Reston Zoo.

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Theodore Roosevelt Island (part II)

4/12/2014

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I just did the walk around the island on the trails, but this is such a nice place to visit. Of course, you have to tune out the jets that come over the island every two minutes or so on their way to Reagan National Airport. It isn't exactly remote wilderness.

So, after finding the random eggs, I hit the boardwalk trail.

The boardwalk covers the swamps and marsh side of the island.

The boardwalk is awesome, although aging. It allows you to walk through a place that would otherwise require swamp boots and some fortitude. And see some cool stuff, like...

A female wood duck, poking around for food.

And then...

Wow, a male wood duck in full breeding plumage.

These guys are some of the most brilliant-colored birds in the US northeast.

So after that, what else?

Mallards are everywhere, but here as well

A black-capped chickadee removing detritus from its hopeful nest site

A bridge that crosses the island is popular with bikers

Two great blue herons (I know I keep saying I will stop posting pics of these) along with a few gulls

Male downy woodpecker

Hermit thrush in the underbrush

And finally, to end this, two pictures of the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial itself.

The Memorial as you first see it coming up the trail

A better idea of the size of the memorial, as it is big and hard to show in a photo.

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Theodore Roosevelt Island

4/11/2014

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So you may be used to the standard great president memorials/monuments on the National Mall. Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson. Wait, was Jefferson a president? Oh yes, he was the third president.

But the president who really understood the value of nature (and created the National Park system) is Theodore Roosevelt. Yes, he had his flaws, but his administration figured out how to conserve some of he great parts of he United States.

And his memorial is on an island in the Potomac River,

I was out to this island today, and here are some pics.

Whoa! This bit of flowering trees was just out my door. Spring is finally here.

But let's go to Theodore Roosevelt island.

Cutleaf toothwart (Cardemine concatenata)

Lesser celandine has really taken over, as an invasive species.

Rowers on the Potomac

A Blackhawk helicopter, always keeping an eye on me

Virginia blue bells (Mertensia virginica) are just starting to bloom.

Double-crested cormorant

Two eggs on the trail. Seem like duck eggs, but no nest anywhere near. A mystery.

Seems like this will take two days to put up all the pics. So, more tomorrow.

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Lexington Estates Park, Great Falls, VA

4/10/2014

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I can't find much historical information on this park, but it is a nice bit of green space with a mostly mature forest (a lot of tulip poplar as with so many parks in this area) and a small pond. I went out there today and found a single hiking trail through the park, which is mostly surrounded by subdivisions with nice houses on reasonable sized lots.

And just as I was finding a parking space, saw...

White-tailed deer! There are, of course, lots of these in the urban parks, but nice to get a good look at one in the sunlight.

This one was just off the park property in a backyard. It didn't take long before the tail went up and it went off into the park and disappeared.

Next I saw two red-shouldered hawks, and grabbed a shot of one flying in a kinda quarter view, which is pretty good for showing the ID marks for the hawk.

Red-shouldered hawk showing tail bands, ruffy forarms, and wing banding with that sorta white spot out near the wing tips.

And then there was the pond. All ponds are interesting for wildlife, and this one was no different. As spring is late here, it was nice to finally see some dragonflies at the pond. And I took this pic of...

Green darners (Anax junius) laying eggs.

Here the male is in front and has the blue abdomen, and is clinging to the female with the reddish abdomen. After mating, they fly around together like this and land now and again so the female can lay eggs under the surface on vegetation. This is the egg laying.

There is a good website on this species if you want more details at:

http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/accounts/Anax_junius/#reproduction

And finally, back to frogs. As previously noted, the wood frog is the first to breed in northern Virginia. Now, they are tadpoles, and the egg masses are just off-white blobs, as seen here...

Wood frog tadpole next to it's original egg mass.

A bunch of wood frog tadpoles

And it has been brought to my attention that I mentioned the end of the breeding season for the spring peepers, without showing a photo of such. Well, this spring has been awful cold and all things are not on schedule and thus hard to predict when and where to find things. I heard spring peepers a couple of times, but not in anyplace I could get to. So here is a photo of one from a few years back taken in West Virginia, just to cover that photographic ground, so to speak.

A spring peeper (pseudacris crucifer) from West Virginia. And note that this is a very small frog, maybe 3/4 inch long.

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Burke Lake, toads mostly

4/9/2014

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The American toad (Bufo americanus) is another of the early breeding Amphibians in northern Virginia. With temperatures now near normal highs for this time of year, after so much cold, they are out and breeding. The wood frogs and spring peepers are now mostly done, and it is the time of the toads.

There are two common toads around here, the American and Fowler's toad (Bufo fowleri). The American toad breeds first. But just to say a bit about how to tell them apart. I find two things most telling (based on research). First, each toad has black spots on its back, and while the American toad has one (sometimes two) warts inside the black spot, Fowler's typically has 3-6 warts inside the black spot. The second bit is that the crest above the eye does not join with the big lump just behind it (the parietal gland) in American toads, while it does with Fowler's toad.

So, with that babble in mind, here are some pics of American toads, in action.